The Templar Legion

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His name was Ragnar Skull Splitter and his ship was the Kraka, named for the daughter of a Valkyrie and a Viking chief. Kraka’s carved wooden image, eyes closed in dreaming sleep, long hair covering her naked body, graced the bow of his warship. It was said that Kraka, like her mother before her, had the power to interpret dreams and see the future. Ragnar fervently prayed that it was so and that she would guide him home once more with her prophecies, because for the last ten days he had traveled a river that seemingly had no end and for five of those days had traveled through what he now knew, despite the blistering heat from the relentless sun, was nothing less than Niflheim, the dark and eternally frozen land of the dead.

Ragnar was the cousin of Harald Sigurdsson, the head of the Varangian Emperors Guard in Miklagard, the Great Walled City, or Constantinople, as the local people called it. Ragnar was Harald’s greatest warrior, and before setting out from that wondrous city at the neck of the world he had vowed to his cousin that he would not return until he had found the secret mines of the ancient king and taken their vast riches in Harald’s name.

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